Welcome to Good News Monday Morning! When I opened my emails this a.m. it wasn’t D.T’s latest tirade that caught my eye, but a post on healthier ice cream. Having downed a malt-flavored Ted Drewes just last night, I was thrilled to see something that might assuage my guilty. I read on . . .
Halo Top Ice Cream
Have you tried Halo Top? It’s in the freezer case of all the major grocery stores, but from what I read it could hang out in the health food section. These little pints of goodness clock in at 240 to 280 calories. Compare that to the near 1000 points of sweetness in a pint of most brands.
Halo Top and Haagen Dazs compared in calories, protein, fat and carbs. The numbers are similar when compared to Ben and Jerrys.
I Googled the name and found plenty of facts and figures on the product. One reviewer had made the “ultimate sacrifice” and ate nothing but Halo Top for ten days. He lost ten pounds and 3% of his body fat.
The Halo Top website has a handy chart matching themselves with Haagen Daz, Ben and Jerry’s, and Dreyers Slow Churned. (See chart at right.) They beat the socks off all of them in reduced calories, carbs and fat and double the protein count. Halo Top uses just a little sugar and ups the sweetness with erythritol and stevia, which are both almost zero-calorie, but natural sweeteners.
The Scoop on Halo Top
Hmm. . . . but what does it taste like? That’s what us foodies want to know. Before I went any further with this post, I had to run my own unscientific “kitchen test.”
Off to Straubs I went early this morning to buy ice cream. Talk about guilt. I felt like a wino standing outside a liquor store waiting for it to open.
Let’s see. . . which flavor should I buy? There was Vanilla Bean, Chocolate, Lemon Cake (highly recommended by one reviewer), Mint Chip, Strawberry, Chocolate Mocha Chip, and Birthday Cake.
All flavors are gluten free, low carb, low fat, with no synthetic growth hormones. There are some unpronounceable words on the label, but the Halo people assure us it’s just the scientific names for the natural ingredients.
Halo Top Chocolate ice cream
I picked the chocolate flavor ($6.49 a pint: the staggering price of low-guilt ice cream) and threw some broccoli into my cart to lessen the stigma at the checkout counter. Because Halo Top tends to freeze hard, it was still rock solid when I got home. It was tasty, but lacked the soft, creaminess that most ice cream junkies enjoy.
Even so, reviewers found the low-guilt dessert “satisfying,” “close to the real thing,” and “a lot like homemade ice cream.” I went with the assessment of the fellow, who said it was a great substitute for someone who eats a lot of ice cream, but you’d still want the real thing occasionally.
Enjoy!
